18 years later, Benedictine spirit lives on in Nazareth, Texas

A statue of St. Scholastica was installed at Holy Family Church in Nazareth, Texas, to honor the work of the Benedictine sisters in Fort Smith for 75 years.
A statue of St. Scholastica was installed at Holy Family Church in Nazareth, Texas, to honor the work of the Benedictine sisters in Fort Smith for 75 years.

FORT SMITH — Nazareth, Texas, population 347, an hour’s drive south of Amarillo, is known for two things — its biblical name and its faith-filled people. In an era where many churches have trouble filling their pews, Holy Family Church in Nazareth seats more than the entire town’s population — 375 to 400 people — every weekend.
Half the parish has attended the ACTS retreats, sponsored by the Diocese of Amarillo, and many meet each Thursday at 6 a.m. to study the Bible.
For the parish’s 100th anniversary in 2002, they began to raise money to erect two statues — one of St. Benedict and one of St. Scholastica — to acknowledge the strong shared history of their parish with the sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith and to thank them for 75 years of service to the parish and local public schools where they taught.
The statues, fashioned in bronze by Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz, depict St. Benedict planting a garden and St. Scholastica at the moment of death, her spirit flying to God. Eleven Benedictine Sisters from St. Scholastica traveled to Nazareth Feb. 9-10 for the blessing of the statues.
Sisters taught in Nazareth from 1915 to 1990, at the invitation of the monks at Subiaco Abbey who staffed Holy Family Church from 1906 to 1939, sharing their faith with the small farming community and seeing their own religious community grow with prodigious numbers of postulants from Nazareth.
Twenty-two women entered religious life, almost all of them becoming Benedictines at St. Scholastica, including several sets of biological sisters, Sisters DeChantal and Roberta Hyland and Frances Ann Braddock; and Sisters Corinne and Cordelia Lange. Sisters Adeline and Xavier Lange, OSB, both entered the Benedictine order, one at Holy Angels Convent in Jonesboro and one at St. Scholastica.
Five men entered the priesthood and one, the brother of Sisters DeChantal, Roberta, and Frances Ann, became a religious brother. Vocations continue to thrive in this small community. Sister Mary Michael Huseman, OSF, of Panhandle, Texas, great-niece of Sister Generose Huseman, OSB, became a Franciscan in 1996.
Deacon Nick Gerber, the great-nephew of Sister Norbert Hoelting, OSB, will be ordained as a priest for the Diocese of Amarillo in June.
Sister Mary Michael said the Benedictines were a huge influence in her life.
“Sister Adrian (Wewers) was one of my favorites,” she said. “She wasn’t a coach, but she was at every single basketball game with her rosary, and we always won. I admired the sisters’ faithfulness, their willingness to serve. They really cared about us and tried their best to teach us.”
During their homecoming weekend, the sisters were impressed at how strong the ties between Holy Family Church and the Benedictines at St. Scholastica still were.
“What struck me most,” vocation director Sister Kimberly Prohaska, OSB said, “was the relationship between the town and the sisters, and that thread is stronger than ever. I was amazed at how this town took the Benedictine charism as their own and gifted us with so much hospitality.”
Sister Kimberly and Brother Francis Kirschner, OSB, from Subiaco Abbey gave a vocation presentation.
Sister Pat Bolling, OSB, a Louisiana native, said she had never encountered a parish with such spirit.
“The parish was small in size, but bigger in heart, community and love than any I’d ever encountered before,” she said.
Most families make God a top priority, according to Father Ken Keller, Holy Family pastor, who has served the small community for three years.
“I really believe that this parish thrives because of its prayer life and liturgical life,” he said. “During Lent, we have 150 people at daily Mass, but even during the rest of the year we have 35 to 40.”
Sister Consuella Bauer, OSB, who taught in Nazareth for several years, agreed. “There were farms all around, but the church and school were central to the community,” she said. “Education kept the faith alive.”

Maryanne Meyerriecks

Maryanne Meyerriecks joined Arkansas Catholic in 2006 as the River Valley correspondent. She is a member of Christ the King Church in Fort Smith, a Benedictine oblate and volunteer at St. Scholastica Monastery.

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